I. In what forms must we labour to advance Christ's Kingdom? In age after age the saints of God have possessed their souls in joy and patience, not gadding about as busy-bodies or other people's bishops, but doing quietly their humble duty, and spending peacefully their holy lives. It has never, in any age, been possible for God's servants to look round them without sorrow. Is there any consolation under this state of things? There is this consolation, that in spite of ourselves, and in spite of our traditional theology, we are driven to trust and hope in God, that He did make the world, and He who made it will guide. Man must do his duty, but man cannot do the work of Providence, and therefore he must wait in quietness and hope. When Saint Francis of Assisi was troubled and disquieted about the great Order which he had founded, and into which the elements of evil began early to intrude, he dreamed that God came to him in a vision of the night, and said, "Poor little man, why dost thou trouble thyself? Thinkest thou not that I am able, if I will it, to protect and keep thy Order?"
II. Let us, then, as our help against morbid anxiety, leading, as it so often does, to spurious excitement, let us remember always that the world is in God's hands, not in the devil's, and not at all in ours; and further, that things may not be so bad as they seem to us. If you ask me what you are to do, I answer, Join in any part of Christ's work, so wide, so blessed, so truly humble. Choose it wisely; join in it heartily; let there be no single life among you which is a life of mere easy self-indulgence, but let every life be consciously dedicated to the service of others, and ready to make sacrifices for their good. Keep your own consciences free from the stain of shame of having added to the world's guilt and misery by the greed of your selfishness, by the baseness of your passions, or by the bitterness of your hate. Show thus actively and passively that you fear God, and love your brother-man, and you may be doing infinitely more, and infinitely more blessed and permanent work for Christ than if you took on yourself to teach, it may be, before you have ever learned, or with loud prolamations of your own conversion set up yourself as a blind leader of the blind. Remember that the vast majority of Christians are simply called to do their duty in the state of life to which God has called them.
F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 33.
References: 1 Thessalonians 4:10; 1 Thessalonians 4:11. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons,No. 13. 1 Thessalonians 4:11. A. Craig, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 330; W. Dorling, Ibid.,vol. viii., p. 120. 1 Thessalonians 4:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:12. W. Braden, Ibid.,vol. ix., p. 33; Homilist,3rd series, vol. viii., p. 99. 1 Thessalonians 4:13. Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 275; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 232.